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Synchronize multiple copies

In this guide, we will create a second copy of the Kloset Store created in Part 1 of the Quickstart.

This second copy will be stored on a S3-compatible storage service, but the same logic applies to any other storage location supported by plakar.

Requirements

This guide assumes that:

Why create multiple copies?

Keeping multiple backup copies dramatically reduces the risk of total data loss by turning a realistic single-site failure into an extremely unlikely event when data is replicated across independent locations (see the Why should you keep several copies of your backups? guide).

Plakar is designed to make it easy to synchronize a Kloset Store to another location.

Login to install pre-built integrations

By default, plakar works without requiring you to create an account or log in. You can back up and restore your data with just a few commands, with no external services involved.

However, logging in unlocks optional features that improve usability and monitoring. Among these features, it adds the ability to install the pre-built integrations hosted on our infrastructure.

In this quickstart, we will use the S3 integration, which requires the integration to be installed first. Therefore, we need to log in.

If you don’t want to log in, it is instead possible to build and install the integration manually. See the Installing Integrations guide for details.

To log in using the CLI:

1plakar login -email <youremailaddress@example.com>

Substitute in your own email address and follow the prompt. You can then check your email and follow the link sent from plakar.io.

To check that you are now logged in, you can run:

plakar login -status

Install the S3 integration

To install the S3 integration, run the following command:

1plakar pkg add s3

If you already had the S3 integration installed and just wanted to update it, you can instead remove the existing version and install the latest one with:

1plakar pkg rm s3
2plakar pkg add s3

Set up S3-compatible storage

For this quickstart, we will use a local MinIO instance as our S3-compatible storage service. If you have access to an actual S3-compatible service (such as AWS S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, etc.), you can skip this step and use the credentials provided by your service provider instead.

Run the following command to start a MinIO instance using Docker:

1docker run -d --name minio -p 9000:9000 -p 9001:9001 quay.io/minio/minio server /data --console-address ":9001"

This command starts a MinIO server on http://localhost:9000, and a web interface available at http://localhost:9001. The default access key is minioadmin and the secret key is also minioadmin.

Configure Plakar

To let plakar know about the S3 storage, we need to configure a new store. We will call this store s3-backups.

Run the following command to create the new store:

1plakar store add s3-backups \
2    location=s3://localhost:9000/mybucket \
3    access_key=minioadmin \
4    secret_access_key=minioadmin \
5    use_tls=false

This command creates a new store named s3-backups that points to the mybucket bucket on the MinIO server running at localhost:9000. It uses the access key and secret key provided above. The use_tls=false option is specified because we are connecting to a local server without TLS.

use_tls should be omitted or set to true when connecting to production S3-compatible services that use TLS.

Initialize the Kloset Store

For now, the Kloset Store points to a bucket that does not exist yet. We need to create it by initializing the store:

1plakar at @s3-backups create

This command initializes the Kloset Store at the S3 location, creating the necessary bucket and structure to hold the backups.

Note the @ symbol before the store name. This is an alias, which indicates that we are referencing a Kloset Store from the configuration. Without the @, plakar would interpret s3-backups as a filesystem path.

The passphrase prompt will appear: you do not have to enter the same passphrase as the local Kloset Store, but you can if you want to.

Plakar will automatically create the bucket if it does not already exist.

List snapshots

If you list the snapshots in this new store, you will see that it is currently empty:

1plakar at @s3-backups ls

Synchronize the local Kloset Store to S3

Now, let’s synchronize the local Kloset Store at $HOME/backups to the S3 Kloset Store we just created.

Run the following command:

1$ plakar at $HOME/backups sync to @s3-backups
2info: Synchronizing snapshot 772fba5f575272ba8742e63c6ec1878623900d158c5de4b20b854a0aa15a7b47 from fs:///Users/niluje/backups to s3://localhost:9000/mybucket
3info: Synchronization of 772fba5f575272ba8742e63c6ec1878623900d158c5de4b20b854a0aa15a7b47 finished
4info: sync: synchronization from fs:///Users/niluje/backups to s3://localhost:9000/mybucket completed: 1 snapshots synchronized

The command transfers all the snapshots from the local Kloset Store to the S3 Kloset Store.

To verify that the synchronization was successful, you can list the snapshots in the S3 Kloset Store again:

1$ plakar at @s3-backups ls
22025-12-15T21:09:32Z   772fba5f   2.9 MiB        0s /private/etc

Notice that the snapshot ID is the same as the one in the local Kloset Store, confirming that the data has been successfully copied.

If you run the sync command again, you will see that no data is transferred because the destination store already contains all the snapshots from the source store.

1$ plakar at $HOME/backups sync to @s3-backups
2destination store passphrase:
3info: sync: synchronization from fs:///Users/niluje/backups to s3://localhost:9000/mybucket completed: 0 snapshots synchronized

In production, you would typically run this command periodically to ensure that the S3 Kloset Store remains up-to-date with the local Kloset Store. If there are no new snapshots to transfer, the command will complete quickly without transferring any data.

A remote Kloset Store works just like a local one

As a side note, you can use the remote Kloset Store just as you would use the local one:

  • to run the UI, plakar at @s3-backups ui
  • to verify integrity, plakar at @s3-backups check
  • to restore files, plakar at @s3-backups restore -to /tmp/restore <snapshot-id>

Check plakar help to see all the available commands.

Congratulations!

You have successfully created a second copy of your Kloset Store on S3-compatible storage. Your backups are now stored in two independent locations.

In this example, we used a local MinIO instance for demonstration purposes. In a real-world scenario, you would use a reliable S3-compatible service to have your backups stored offsite.

With plakar, hosting your backups on S3 is as easy as hosting them locally. In addition, many more store integrations are available for hosting your backups in other locations.

Next steps

Modern infrastructure involves more than just filesystems. In the next part of this Quickstart, we will see how to back up an S3 bucket using plakar.